Investing In Training Versus Making A Profit: A Yin And Yang Business Solution

Two topics that are getting a lot of attention in the business world today are the need to improve employee engagement and the need to improve organizational culture. Both come with costs that are virtually incalculable and negatively impact the satisfaction and retention of customers, your profitability, and your brand’s reputation.

The data is also quite clear in identifying one of the root causes of the problem.

While I have heard it said by many people in many ways, the bottom line is a simple one: People leave managers, not companies. In particular, they leave managers closest to the frontline where products are made and service and support are provided.

Your personal and organizational behaviors drive your personal and organizational results. The selection and training of your management team should be treated as a critical strategic initiative.

In Chinese philosophy, the yin and yang is a concept that is said to describe how “seemingly opposite and contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected and interdependent in the natural world.”

Manager training is an investment that equips leaders with the knowledge and skills to train, coach, and develop others to maximize their ability to meet and exceed performance expectations. This is key to growth and profitability. However, training is often viewed by many senior leaders as a financial liability or an unnecessary expense that negatively impacts profitability. As a result, their investment in their training budgets can range anywhere from minimal to nonexistent.

However, like yin and yang, training investment and profitability are clearly complementary, interconnected and interdependent.

The good news is your hiring and training processes are a significant part of the solution that will accelerate engagement and eliminate stress and fear in your workplace. Transform your manager hiring and training approach, and you transform your business results.

Please note, however, that spending alone doesn’t guarantee better results. If the goal of your manager training and development program is to equip managers with the attitudes, behaviors, and skills to connect with their team members, attention must be paid to the content you teach and the methods used to deliver it.

Hire For Attitude

Southwest Airlines and Zappos are two companies that, to borrow Southwest’s hiring mantra, "hire for attitude and train for skill." They look for people with certain behaviors during their interview processes, including listening, smiling, curiosity, saying thank you and other traits that convey caring and warmth.

It can be difficult to train and develop these characteristics in people who naturally lack them. The focus on these behaviors during the hiring process enables these candidates to be better leaders and a great cultural fit.

Train Engagement Behaviors

Theodore Roosevelt’s observation that “nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care” is a great guide to identifying the behaviors and skill sets needed to improve engagement and create a “safe” work environment.

At a minimum, these skills must include developing focused and “fierce” listening skills, conveying empathy, and building individual and team relationships based on trust and respect. Perhaps most important of the three is developing focused and fierce listening skills. Listening is the foundational skill that conveys respect and shows you care. It is a seemingly simple skill that makes a huge difference in building individual and team relationships.

Accountability For Performance

Harold D. Stolovitch’s book, Telling Ain’t Training, transformed my attitude and approach to adult learning and effective training methodology. Interactive virtual learning and web-based training is a method that many organizations use to deliver content. This can be beneficial when it comes to reducing costs and 24-hour access to training courses, but problematic when it comes to skill assessment.

Skill demonstrations should not be done for punitive purposes. They are done to identify skill gaps that can be closed through coaching and development. Can your new managers demonstrate they can listen effectively and with empathy, deliver feedback and coach to close skill gaps, be comfortable and confident in “getting to know you” meetings with new team members, or have a difficult yet necessary accountability conversations with disengaged employees? The only way to know is to observe their behaviors in these scenarios.

The simple reality is that the behaviors of your management team from the C-suite to the level-one frontline manager drive employee performance, employee retention, organizational performance and profitability.

Are the benefits of investing in high-quality, behavior-based manager training and development programs worth the risk? Are the savings associated with doing little to nothing when it comes to manager training sufficient to offset the lost revenue associated with employee disengagement and a poor workplace environment? Your choice!